breakfast grew eyes
by Flashing The Floods
Summary: Earthquake fic for TheFigureInTheCorner. Utter crap beyond the levels of crap.


**Author's Note: Written for TheFigureInTheCorner, who wanted an earthquake fic. I tired, dude. Sorry it's crap. Crappy, grossly inaccurate, dramatized, hideously disjointed, tasteless, pithy, grating, cryptic, redundant, mediocre crap. Wangsty too, as I was unable to correctly deliver le desired emotional turmoil. So much wangst. My apologies. Somewhat revolving door POV. Minor Kimolette femslash. Probably should've asked if that was okay first, but it just kind of happened, so sorry about that too. **

**Warning for like, mild gore and whatnot. Also underage drinking, eating disorders, hinted recreational drug use, blink-and-miss-it suicidal undertones and unfortunate implications.**

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One of Violette's earliest memories is the chaos of a turbulent floor, of helplessness overcoming her as she's bopped and bounced around with no control whatsoever, unable to get her footing. She was three years old, ushered into a rented bounce house overcapacity with louder, older children at a cousin's birthday party. Every time they jumped, she went flying and while they shrieked happily she whimpered with fright.

The memory never left her, the still frames of bright yellow stars printed on the plastic ceiling she very nearly almost rocketed into, the strained whirring of the fan that kept it blown up, the first real sense of danger she had ever felt.

When she's walking out of the gardening club (planning to stop at Kim's locker and slip a note inside) and the ground starts rumbling, it's this memory that briefly flashes before her eyes, and that gut-wrenching helplessness is realized before she even questions what's going on. Plants fall, crates knock together and topple, pots break with cartoon-esque clatters and soil goes spilling.

Violette goes spilling with it. Ferociously, the ground shakes and the greenhouse collapses, burying her under glass and gussets.

The magnitude is prodigious. Roads crack and split like frozen rivers, buildings swallowed up and spat out shambles in the calamity. There is no warning, there is no pause, it's as though vengeful gods are digging themselves out of the earth's bowels.

The school seems to deracinate diagonally. Lysander is right on the precipice as the floor tears down the middle, no time to think anything other than,_ oh_, before he's tipping over the edge.

Castiel lunges and grabs him by the wrist, belly-flopping to the ground, air jarred out of his lungs. Grabbing Lysander wasn't so much a decision as it was protective thoughtlessness and he's hanging on with all he's got. It feels like his arm is going to be torn out of its socket; Lysander is heavy and the world is still rattling, everything giving way, screams and rupturing concrete crackling like a lightning storm behind his back.

They lock eyes and in Lysander's Castiel can see the plead so pronounced he can hear it in his head; _don't drop me._

And Castiel doesn't drop him— at least, not until Iris trips over him in her mad dash to escape the rain of ceiling tiles. His grip was straining to begin with, all it takes is this collision to lose it and Lysander plummets.

It's a five second descent that ends on dysmorphic, trembling ground. Lysander finds himself still reaching up for a heartbeat, vaguely incomprehensive of what's just happened, then there's warm crimson clumping his eyelashes together, and then there's nothing.

Alexy can't cling onto the railing anymore. He's violently dislodged by nature's ongoing outburst, pitching headlong down the staircase. There's a bolt of agony as his gaping mouth strikes a step at an unfortunate angle, his jaw wrenched out of place, teeth smashed inwardly and sundered from the roots. Half of them get swallowed in a current of blood that chokes him as he somersaults the rest of the way down.

He lands sputtering, blinded by unbearable pain as he crookedly folds into himself.

Melody's fingers are still twitching. They've been shorn clean off by the paper cutter she was unlucky to be using at the stroke of disaster, now they're jerking and skipping away, blood spurting out to decorate the posters she'd wanted to trim. She can't hear her own screaming over the bedlam of nature's will, but it tears her throat as raw as her rapidly paling, exposed meat.

Mere meters away, Nathaniel's aptitude for poor fortuity has peaked at new levels. The human jaw can deliver an impressive amount of force when clamped, though it goes without saying nowhere near in the margins of how impressive the world's force is; his lunch splattered, the fork lost in a yawing crack, and his tongue still attached only by a few tendrils of stringy muscle.

His lingual artery gushes plentifully, his last breaths shoved out of his lungs like they'd been unwelcome guests.

Charlotte dives to push Li out of the path of showering literature from _Austen_ to_ Zahirovic_ that the massive bookshelf will undoubtably follow. She tackles her to the shaking floor just as it collapses. Amber can't outrun it and she's pinned beneath. Bones fracture and splinter through her flesh, screeching in torment.

She doesn't suffer for long, as the wall caves in and she's squished like a grape under a hammer. Steaming blood sprays her friends, staining today's examples of their good fashion sense.

A pipe bursts over the boys' restroom. Armin hears the distinctive, metallic snap and rushing before water floods down from the ceiling a midst a jungle of wires and chunks of ceiling. Trying to get his footing and his pants up at the same time is no easy task, and he slips on the slick floor.

"Shit," comes out as a wavering distress cry, and then his head cracks against the porcelain bowl. He registers the pain before his vision dims and drowns undramatically in toilet water.

Peggy is jolted out the window, shards of glass razing her skin as she plunges below. Sheer, animal terror is her final awareness before she smacks the concrete, a puddle of viscera and contorted limbs.

The entire school collapses on a bed of streets latticed by havoc and cracks running deep, just another heap of debris, its fragility not dissimilar to a prodded house of cards.

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Castiel shuffles to the cafeteria, supposing he might as well get a coffee just to have something to do. He finds it ironic how messy the cafeteria is given that the rest of this place effuses antiseptic, walls as white bleached eggshells. There are empty sugar packets and crushed creamers scattered around the expresso machine and the lids don't fit the styrofoam cups quite right. But he's not a picky person, so he takes it anyway and glances around for a place to sit.

A familiar face catches him off guard. He mulls over whether or not approaching her would be a good idea. But then, hey, he's got two hours to kill so he might as well. He weaves around tables and people and plops down on the bench next to her. She's staring down at her mismatched sneakers, zombified absence on her face and a partly-eaten chicken sandwich resting on her knee.

"Hey, Kim."

Kim notices him and picks up her head, blinking at him, gaze glinting faintly in surprise. "Oh. Hey."

"You here for Violette?" He guesses.

She bobs her head, blows a sigh out of her nose and wrings her fingers together. "She won't wake up. Not even for me...But she can still breathe by herself. They say that's good."

"She'd probably want you to finish that." Castiel nods toward the sandwich.

Kim snorts. "It tastes like rubber. The food here is nasty and f.y.i, so is the coffee."

He takes a sip and curls his lip in disgust as he finds she's right. It tastes like someone pissed in sludge and put it in the microwave.

"So what about you?" asks Kim. "Why're you here?"

He lowers the cup and spares a tepid glower to the brace supporting his wrist. "Eh. Parents dropped me off cause I'm supposed to go to physical therapy, but it's pointless. They told me even with the best results, I still can't play guitar."

Kim laughs, a sharp, ugly sound.

He shoots her a quizzical look and she just shakes her head.

"Sorry— No, see, that's the thing. I can't feel sorry for you. Not when my dad's dead and Violette's halfway there." Her tone isn't condescending, only blunt and exhausted. She takes a very long drink out of her Sweet Amoris water bottle.

For a moment Castiel almost bites her; he wasn't asking for her pity anyway and he could easily point out that between the reek of her body odor, the bruise-dark bags under her eyes, and the rat's nest that her hair has become, she looks like something ready to crawl into the grave herself. But he doesn't do that. He exhales heavily and slumps down.

"Fair enough," he says.

"Since the coffee sucks, you want some of this?" She holds out the water bottle and raises a brow.

"What is it?"

"Vodka."

Castiel takes it and swigs, appreciating the kick in the back of his throat.

"How's Lysander?" She asks as she takes it back.

_(don't drop me)_

The kick this sends to Castiel's gut is not as welcome. "I don't know. Haven't seen him since his brother's funeral and he won't talk me."

"That sucks." Kim picks up her sandwich and moves it to her other knee, seemingly a distrait action.

He tries and fails to make a fist with idle despondency and looks at the clock above the salad bar. "Hey, do you think Violette's dreaming?"

"I hope so," murmurs Kim. "I hope it's about something nice, but not too nice because then she won't want to come back."

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She runs her fingertips down the surgical scar that bisects the stretch behind her temple down to the base of her head. It feels odd, a smooth snake between the fuzzy beginnings of new hair, a snake that's devoured every recollection she presumably possessed.

Apparently her name is Iris.

Iris is friendly and cheerful, not very good at math but proficient on the guitar. Iris's favorite color isn't a single color, but a rainbow because she likes them all and she couldn't pick just one. Iris loves animals, but her most favorite is the red panda and she's passionate about spreading awareness concerning their habitat loss. Iris's hobbies include rollerblading, swimming, and hanging out with friends. Said friends describe Iris's personality as helpful and eager.

Iris seems like a nice person. She's smiling in all the photos and no one really has a bad thing to say about her. Apparently she is Iris, but she's not sure if she feels like Iris.

She does feel that she'd _like_ to be Iris.

All of her apparent family and friends treat her like a jeweled vase; precious and fragile. They force smiles and pat her knees and squeeze her shoulders, assuring her it's fine that she takes her time (takes her time doing what?). It's fine that they are strangers to her and that she is a stranger to herself and that everything is okay, don't worry, she'll be back to her old self in no time.

Only it's been time. Well, maybe two months actually isn't that long, but to her it's her _entire life._

There is not one memory before waking up in the warm, fuzzy embrace of painkillers. She has no identity and she tries so hard to search herself for one, she brings herself to pounding headaches just trying to dig up a scrap of something before, anything before, but she always comes up empty.

It is a lonely, eerie thing not knowing who you are. She feels like a ship lost in a fog, drifting blindly along the bends and curves of a winding river, no lighthouse in sight.

She supposes she appreciates the people who care about her, but none of them understand her struggle. They seem to think if they keep talking about old times she'll wake up from this static nightmare and suddenly be someone who knows herself, but all it does is twist the knife. Nostalgia unfurling on their faces as times spent together softly push past their lips, every word a pin to her hollow heart.

She can't be Iris.

Iris was a person full of life, she is a mannequin, a shell around insubstantiality, stuffed up with this crushing sense of loss and stiff with the reverberations of reminiscences hopelessly out of reach.

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"What did you tell my parents that convinced them to let you in?"

Rosalya doesn't reply right away. Lysander is so starkly emaciated it hurts. The pillows he's propped back against look like they weigh more. His hair is greasy, hanging over his shoulders in slack tangles and he won't look at her, dull gaze firmly fixed on the book in his hand.

"That's not a nice way to greet somebody who sat on a bus for nine hours to come see you," she sighs, folding her arms. She tries to look stern, but she's really only vulnerable, hugging herself.

Lysander puts the book down and the gunmetal glare he pierces her with makes her wish he didn't. "You want to talk about what's nice, Rosa? Because it certainly isn't choosing to do something undesirable, and then holding it against someone who didn't— who _wouldn't_ ask you to do it. You know what's actually rather rude? Showing up in someone else's home without any notice whatsoever."

She tries not to flinch. "I would've called if you still picked up the phone."

"My apologies, it's usually out of reach." He scoffs irritably and casts a glance toward his desk. His phone is there, next to a forgotten notebook. Rosalya picks it up and tosses it over. She throws too far and it lands on the right side of the bed, bouncing quietly against the comforter. Lysander's right side is the paralyzed side, he has to reach over to grab it with his left hand and then he just discards it back on the headboard.

"It isn't charged."

"Lysander—"

"Go. Home."

"No!" Rosalya's voice breaks. "I can't, I can't lose you too..." Leigh's death is an open, excruciating wound. She can't sleep because he's in every dream, caressing her with featherlight hands, melting her with that gaze until she wakes up clutching the knives in her chest. She can't wear half her closet because his passion in every stitch, no amount of laundry soap will suds away the scent of his store.

Lysander turns away. "Do you realize that you're hurting me?" he asks, voice as soft as dandelion clocks.

"How could I? You won't talk to me, you don't talk to anyone." Rosalya takes a halting step forward and lets herself sink to her knees. She slowly inclines forward and pushes her forehead to the mattress. "Please talk to me. I miss you."

Lysander sighs wearily. "What did you do to your hair?"

She lifts a hand and runs it through her bubblegum-pink tresses. "He would've hated it. He wouldn't have told me so, but he would've hated it." Which was probably why she dyed it. Maybe a part of her is pissed at him for dying when they had plans, when they had the whole world to bite out of together, or maybe she is just trying to distance herself from him now that he's somewhere she can't go, or maybe she is trying to be someone else because without him she doesn't feel much like herself.

"He would've told you it was lovely," agrees Lysander.

She looks up and tentatively crawls her fingers over the comforter, laying them over his. "You should eat more."

"You should eat less," he replies.

Rosalya winces. She knows she's been packing it on. She doesn't call her inadequate coping method "comfort food" because to do so would be to imply that she actually finds comfort in her disgusting binges, stuffing her face with sticky pastries, fudgey brownies, cupcakes drowned in frosting, and going back every meal for seconds, and thirds, and fourths. There is no consolation whatsoever in cramming her gullet until she's so bloated moving hurts.

What there is, is distraction. Parts of her Leigh took with him temporarily filled up by excess calories. Another way she might be trying to be someone else, maybe she even hates herself a little for letting go of her standards.

"There's a terrible thing to say to a girl," she mutters flatly.

"Sometimes things are terrible." Lysander turns his hand so their palms are touching, frigid fingers closing around hers.

"Where's your positivity at?" She asks and maybe she's trying to hurt him a little bit because his last remark still stings.

His lips pull in a crestfallen smile. "It must be on my right."

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Insistent tapping tugs Kentin from his dreams. He sits and peers fuzzily into the dark, searching for the source. It's his window. Or rather, the shivering boy outside his window.

Bewildered and still slow with the hold of sleep, Kentin crawls across his bed and opens it. Alexy clambers in before he can vocalize the half-formulated question on his tongue.

"Hey. Sorry I woke you up..." Alexy's eyes shift uneasily under the frosty silver of the moon's glow and he shuts the window in lieu of looking at Kentin.

"But what are you doing here?" Kentin mumbles uncertainly. According to his alarm clock, it's three in the morning.

"I just..." Alexy shakes his head and holds his arm, gaze floating up as he lets go of a barbed breath. "Please let me stay here."

Kentin frowns. "Did something happen? Are you okay?"

Alexy finally meets his eyes, expression unreadable even under the moonlight. "It's late and it's complicated. Can I stay or not?"

Kentin isn't satisfied with that, but it_ is_ late and Alexy is obviously distressed. "You know where the couch is at. Just be quiet, okay? My mom's a light sleeper."

Alexy bites his lip and lowers his voice to a barely audible whisper. "Can I stay with you?"

Kentin pauses. To say it's been a rough couple of months would be an understatement. Gently, gently, he says, "You know I don't ca—"

"I know. It's not like that, I just don't want to be alone." His gaze retreats like a scared animal.

"Okay then." Kentin scoots over and lies back down. "Come on in, just watch my leg."

Alexy kicks off his shoes and climbs into the bed. He lies on his side, facing Kentin and breathing an apology. "I know it's awkward, but I really can't be on my other side. I just got the last bridge in and it's still pretty sore." He gingerly rubs his jaw and Kentin gives a nod before rolling over to face the wall.

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Kim isn't around and that's telling because Castiel was beginning to question if she ever left.

She's always there when he bails on his appointments, not eating in the cafeteria even if she might have food. She usually doesn't. He kills time with her and bleak conversation for about an hour before she heads back to Violette's room and then he just messes around on his phone, eventually wandering back to the parking lot before his dad picks him up.

But today the bench is empty and when he scans the rest of the room, there are many drawn faces, but none of them belong to her. Prickling with unease as grim fingers clench around his gut, the aroma of cheap grub in the air suddenly goes from tolerable to nauseating. Castiel backpedals and heads to the parking lot.

As the automatic doors slide closed behind him, he digs his cigarettes out of his pocket and starts fishing for the lighter. He fumbles, drops it pitifully. It clatters to the ground. He bends down to retrieve it, but trembling brown fingers beat him to the punchline and when he glances up, Kim's eyes are glassy.

"Thanks." He doesn't know what else to say as he takes it from her. He lights up and leans back against the building, and he thinks she's already answered the question he probably shouldn't ask.

"Can I could bum that?" mumbles Kim.

She doesn't smoke. Castiel passes it to her anyway.

She brings it to her lips, but her fingers won't stop shaking and she lowers it again. He takes it upon himself to tweeze it from her grasp and inhale a long, smoldering drag.

"How's Violette?" he asks and the taste of smoke masks something bad he can't quite place.

Kim makes this godawful noise like a constipated cat and her mouth curves in a jarringly warm smile. "Kind," she gasps. "So kind. She's an organ donor. I didn't know that until today, but it doesn't surprise me. She was always like that. You probably didn't notice, people didn't notice that about her, people barely ever noticed _her_, and she, she just..."

Swallowing the shards of whatever got stuck in her throat, Kim lets out a shuddering breath and rubs her hand over her face.

"I'm sorry," Castiel murmurs. It's automatic, it's the thing everyone says, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

"Yeah." Kim's cheeks dimple where she bites the inside and then she pushes away from the wall without another backward glance. "I gotta go."

Castiel grabs her by the arm and she jerks out of his grip almost immediately, but at least she does turn around.

"Are you sure you should be driving?"

"Don't...Just don't." Her tears start leaking and she scrubs them away with her knuckle, backing away slowly. "You...You should go to your therapy, Castiel, these people hate loiterers." With that, she makes another break for her car.

He watches her go and flicks some ash to the cement.

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Melody tries. She's getting used to her new house and she's getting used to people staring at the place her arm used to be, and she's getting used to homeschooling.

When she wakes up from her nightmares, she treads to the kitchen and bakes cupcakes at midnight because cupcakes are nicer than waiting for dreamscape castles to crumble and bloody tongues and fingers to rain from shaking skies. Cupcakes are sweet and time-consuming and they make her parents smile.

She pins up her sleeves with cute buttons and hair-clips so they look trendy instead of like ghosts trailing by her side. She tries.

She tries very hard, and progress is a delicate thing. It is achieved steadily, with consistent effort and tiny victories and abundant patience. Progress doesn't come easily, but it can be destroyed as easily as the wolf blew down the straw house and it's a different obstacle course for everyone, so Melody doesn't push Iris and Rosalya when they refuse her suggestions of hanging out.

Melody accepts rejection politely, but she accepts it individually and re-suggests after decent intervals until the point in time comes where she's gotten a yes from both of them. And when that happens, she doesn't recoil from the dead look in Rosalya's eyes or let her hurt show when Iris tenses under her greeting hug as though she were a stranger.

In all fairness, she has to understand that she might as well be.

"Iris, this Rosalya," she introduces awkwardly, gesturing to the latter. "You were friends."

"I know, I think...I have you in my phone contacts, don't I?" Iris studies Rosalya intently, sea-green eyes squinting. "Or do I know a different Rosalya too? You don't look much like the picture."

Melody screams internally. She knows Iris isn't being rude intentionally, and Rosalya does look much different (bright bubblegum hair, about ten centimeters added to her waistline and that creepy, fatalistic dullness in her eyes) but honestly, how many Rosalya's would she know!?

Rosalya barks a laugh. "Wow, you really don't remember shit, do you?"

"Nada," Iris agrees, knocking her knuckles against her pale plum beanie for emphasis.

"That's okay. You're actually kinda right. I'm a different Rosalya if you want to get into poetic metaphors." She waves her hand dismissively and the dumb, confused look that crosses Iris's face is truly the first hint of the Iris Melody knew before this girl wearing her clothes woke up and looked at her with blank, porcelain doll eyes.

"It's nice to meet you," Iris says uncertainly and holds out her hands. Rosalya quirks a brow at that, but she shakes it like a real team player.

"So, what do you want to do first?" Melody asks brightly.

Iris vaguely looks around the mall. "Uh..."

"Let's get something sweet," Rosalya declares, heading toward the Frozen Funland. However different she may be, apparently she is still decisive and Melody finds a grain of comfort in this.

There are penguins in cutesy scarfs painted on the wall, having snowball fights, sledding, and building snow forts. Melody orders a cup of blueberry frozen yogurt, Iris orders a chocolate banana and then she has to pause.

"You know, you never used to like those," Melody informs uncertainly. "Your favorite was neapolitan..."

"Oh." Iris blinks blankly and retracts her order. Melody wants to tell her she didn't have to do that, but then it's awkward, because if that were the case, why tell Iris about her tastes in the first place?

Rosalya gets what is dubbed a 'chocolate explosion' and even for a fan of sweets like Melody, it looks so rich it makes her teeth hurt. It's massive scoops of chocolate frozen custard in a bowl bigger than her and Iris's orders combined, an island in a bay of chocolate syrup, sprinkled with chocolate chips and rippled with chunks of brownie, topped off with fluffy whipped cream dotted with chocolate shavings.

They sit at a table and then another awkward silence ensues. Melody knows it's probably up to her to make conversation, but she has to be careful. Every topic is a potential threat. She can't bring up old times without putting Iris in a cruel position, she can't ask how they've been because the answer is obviously not good, fashion is probably a tender point for Rosa...

"Um...Well, I haven't been here in awhile, but it's still delicious," she settles on.

"Definitely," agrees Rosalya, but Melody isn't sure if she's actually tasting any of it. She's shoveling it into her mouth at an alarming velocity, at the very least she must have a brain freeze. She spoons up amounts almost too big to fit onto the utensil and she doesn't even pause to breathe, as soon as the spoon leaves her lips, it's digging up more chocolate explosion.

There's already a fudge mess all around her mouth and chin, and Melody is finding herself peculiarly disturbed...And frankly, disgusted. She isn't the only one to notice.

"You can really put it away," Iris comments, sounding more incredulous than critical, but even so Melody is between cringing and gasping aloud.

"Iris!"

"What?" Carrot brows knit in confusion. "I thought friends were supposed to be candid with each other. "

"Best friends are," Rosalya corrects, licking off some of the chocolate around her mouth before waving her spoon for emphasis. "We were never really all that close."

"Oh..." Iris looks distantly troubled by this. "Is that right?"

"Yup. We hung out sometimes, but Melody was usually too busy trying to get into Nat's pants and you were friends with everyone, so I guess you just didn't have time." She casually shrugs her shoulders as Melody's heart shatters all over again.

She gets up from the table, her hands shaking. "Why would you...How can you...Talk like that?"

"Sorry, sweetie." Rosalya pointedly devours another diabetes-coated blob. "I'm not gonna play nice if you're going to keep gawking at me when I'm trying to eat. I'm fat, not a circus attraction."

Iris is about ten steps behind, features pensive as she taps a finger to her jaw. "Nat was...The president?"

This was a mistake.

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Blinding lights in all shades of neon rainbow flash to the tempo of techno and the warehouse broils, overcapacity with dancing bodies, most older than he is, some worryingly younger. The air is thick with the scent of sweat and synthetic fruit flavoring, and Kentin is more than a little unnerved when Alexy loops his arms around his neck and grazes his earlobe with his lips.

"Dance with me, Ken."

"I don't know," he says. Frankly he doesn't want to be here at all, but Alexy insisted and refusing Alexy is a nigh impossible task. "I just got my cast off..."

"All the more reason to have fun." Alexy draws back, fingers tapping along his shoulders, suspiciously dilated gaze reflecting the lights.

"You know I don't have any rhythm."

"Get lost in the crowd and no one will notice." Alexy winks and drags Kentin into the throng by his dog tags.

Personally, Kentin thinks that's what Alexy's been doing the entire time; losing himself in whatever he can. If they weren't here, they'd be somewhere else as consuming.

Alexy throws himself into the rave with his eyes closed, arms up and hips swinging. His multiple necklaces of glow sticks and glittery whistles bounce against his chest, his loose shirt riding up and perspiration shining on his skin. Kentin lacks his enthusiasm and his fluidity, but he sways along because he's already here, gets bumped back into place by strangers when he misses a step.

Men don't talk about their feelings. That's just how it is and that's exactly how it should be, according to his father. And parents know best, right? His father has been hammering it into his head since he was old enough to grasp the concept, and he's at the point in his life where he thinks he might care about it just as passionately, eventually. Despite that, he isn't okay with this.

Alexy hasn't even said Armin's name in over two months. He hasn't acknowledged Armin, or what happened, and continues to act like nothing did, acts like everything is totally fine in spite of the fact he's hiding out in Kentin's attic.

Yeah, there's that too.

It's been three weeks since he crawled in through the window, two since his parents have taken notice of missing food, and one since his mother wondered (luckily for Alexy without pursuit) if there were rodents in the attic.

Kentin's tried to bring it up a couple of times, albeit indirectly, but Alexy always finds a way to talk around what he was saying and change the subject, occasionally tossing out an empty promise.

_(i'll leave tomorrow)_

It feels wrong. It makes Kentin's skin quiver, and he has no clue what to think. Except that maybe he should kick Alexy out. His parents must be worried sick about him, right? They might've even called the police. Unless they know where he is, which Kentin highly doubts given Alexy's answerless brush-offs and impenetrable distraction tactics.

Meantime, Kentin has lost track of him. The lights are disorienting and there is no organization to the dance floor, arms flail in front of his face, bodies brush against him, for all he knows a sea of glow sticks between him and Alexy.

Damn it.

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"First Rosa, now you. Doesn't anyone know how to call in advance?"

Castiel doesn't reply. He just stands there, this harrowed look on his face like someone just shot his dog. Lysander sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Though he believes that he's retained his patience for the most part, he simply isn't in the mood for this.

"What is it that you want?" he prompts, tapping his nails against the cover of the book.

Castiel responds with a shrug and breaks eye contact, suddenly very interested in the pattern on the carpet.

Lysander allows the silence to accumulate only until his fingers are tired. "You should go home," he tells him as he picks the book back up and opens it to where he's left off.

"You look like shit," Castiel says at last, tactless as ever. It catches Lysander off guard and he shakes his head as a dry grin lifts the heavy corners of his mouth.

"You should know if I could, I would get up and hug you for that because—" He breaks off with a noise of surprise as Castiel practically tackles him with what is apparently affection, enveloping him in the scent of nicotine and cinnamon Altoids as he squeezes him tightly. "Ah...Not that hard. I didn't mean it literally...At least mind my organs."

Castiel doesn't, so Lysander just permits it and rests his chin on his shoulder. It's natural, he supposes. Castiel is of a rather aggressive nature, and as such is driven by action more than thought. For him, sometimes thought is only half-attainable without exploit and his own intentions aren't clear until he grasps them, this Lysander knows.

"You really, really look like shit," Castiel repeats.

Lysander gives a thoughtful hum. "Then I suppose we still have something in common."

Castiel grunts and finally lets go of him, but he doesn't leave the bed, sitting so close his body heat is oppressive. "What're you reading?"

"Something Nathaniel loaned me. It's contrived and laying on the postmodernism a little too thick for my liking, but I've already reached the point of no return. I have to see how it ends and at any rate, I can't give it back." And he doesn't have much else to do, but that goes without saying.

Castiel's tenses and looks to him, eyes as desolate as soot coating a forgotten fireplace. "Violette died."

"That's unfortunate." He always appreciated Violette. She was one of the only people he could write around. He recalls sharing the gardening club's inspiring atmosphere with her, he with a pen and she with a paintbrush. She was so subdued and just as much in her own world as he was in his that sometimes Lysander only noticed she was there when the swish of soft bristles against canvas helped coax the clouds out of his muse.

"Lys...How are you doing?"

Lysander swipes his tongue over his lips, glances away and flips the page.

"If you really want me to go, I will."

"I don't care what you do, Castiel." He pointedly fixates on the words on the page, but they've all turned to senseless shapes squished against one another.

"Okay...I'm gonna stick around," says Castiel, tone treading cautiously. "Can you scoot over?" It's not a hesitant request, it's a genuine question and Lysander thinks he feels another piece of himself break off and fall away.

"As a matter of fact, I can't." Well, perhaps he could, but he's leaning toward no and doesn't want to try.

"Sorry." Castiel grimaces.

"You should be," he mutters before he can stop himself, but then he's the one who's sorry when his best friend flinches, face twisted like Lysander's just taken a bite out of his heart.

Even so, he can't find it in himself to take it back, and maybe it's better that way because that's what gets Castiel to leave. It's not that he doesn't have tolerance, it's only that absences are easier than presences.

Being alone is far less demanding.

Ⴟ

ⴟ

Ⴟ

Caffeine has become Kim's new lover.

She takes her coffee black, one cup for every meal, another cup to chase it down with, two with cream and a cola for dessert. Don't forget iced tea for every snack. If she cut herself, the wound would bleed lukewarm wakefulness.

Her eyes burn like they've been sprinkled with salt, her thoughts are sliding from solid cogitation to fuzzy abstraction, and no amount of stretching or pounding bruised knuckles into her punching bag will work the kinks out of her back.

It's a poor state of being, but to say it is preferable to sleeping is an understatement.

Sleep is cruel, sleep is terrifying, sleep is— Well, no that's not quite right. Sleep isn't her problem, REM is.

The suns in her dreams are smokey gray eyes, blinking beneath the lovely forest of dark lashes and glimmering with warmth her slumber tricks her into thinking she can have.

Bashful, whispery breezes blow _I love you's_ into her ears and small, graphite-smudged fingers intertwine with hers, violet washes over the sky and Kim is extraordinarily happy.

Then the dream ends and she is awake, stitches of acceptance torn out of grief's wounds by the the sheer brutality of false hope.

Sometimes.

Sometimes when she sleeps, it's the world where she's five years old again, going on errands with Dad and grumpy when he makes her hold his hand when they cross the street because she is a big girl, dang it, she doesn't_ need_ to hold hands.

But then all is forgiven because he lets her step on her tiptoes to put the letters in the mailbox and high-fives her with that same huge, strong hand and takes her to the park.

He pushes her on the swing and for awhile he keeps pushing her, but eventually the pushes stop and when she looks back, he's on his back on his wood chips, bloody eyes bulging out of his skull, legs smashed into hamburger meat, chest sunken in, arms knobbed with broken bones and they're no longer in the park, but in the morgue.

This time when Kim wakes up, she's already crying.

If she has to eat coffee grounds by the spoonful, so be it.

Ⴟ

ⴟ

Ⴟ

Alexy's confused. He knows he's wasted, so maybe that's why there are pieces missing. He can't remember what occurred between making out with that cute Asian guy with atomic tangerine streaks in his hair, and ending up here, puking his guts out into the less revolting of the two toilets in the club's filthy men's bathroom.

He hates public restrooms. It's not like public restrooms are places people are usually fond of, but he definitely hates them more than the average person and cleanliness doesn't have a single fucking thing to do with it.

"I'm done," he croaks, swallowing back a wet burp and using the toilet paper holder to help get to his feet. He already feels his stomach rebelling against him, but even through the haze in his head, he just wants to get out of here.

"Yeah, I'm not so sure about that." Kentin parks him back down and when he tries to argue, the vomit comes out and then he's coughing, that hot, foul taste adhered to his tongue.

"Okay, now I'm done." He hauls himself up again and flushes with his foot because it's to disgusting to touch with his hands, but doing so throws him off-kilter and he hits the stall wall, stumbling back and registering without much concern that he's going to fall on the floor.

Only he doesn't because Kentin catches him and helps him right himself.

Alexy mumbles his thanks and staggers toward the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Gonna dance." He can still hear the music pounding beyond the door, muffled and not quite loud enough to mute his fuzzy thoughts. Thankfully it explodes in his eardrums once he opens the door and stumbles over the threshold.

Kentin follows him, grabs his arm. "We should go," he insists. "You can hardly walk."

"Sorry, Ken, can't hear you. I'm gonna go try to find that guy I was with, so I'll catch up with you later." He tries to get out of Kentin's grip, but to his surprise it doesn't slacken and Kentin tugs him back into the bathroom.

"I said we should go," he repeats, clear and stern. "You're really, really drunk and it's late anyway."

Even through the jigsaw haze, Alexy can tell he has that look again. Ugh.

"Aww, don't be a fun killer, Ken." He pokes his tongue out and pats him on the cheek. "You can—" He belatedly realizes he's going to throw up again as his stomach jumps into his throat and he doesn't have time to do anything but duck his head. Most of the mess splashes on the dirty tile, but Kentin's shoes don't make it out unscathed.

"Sorry," he slurs and thinks that he should get some paper towel.

"Goddamn it!" Kentin rakes his hand through his hair, gritting his teeth.

"I'm sorry, s'accident." Alexy yanks some towels out of the dispenser and drops to his knees, clumsily scrubbing at his friend's shoes.

"I really can't do this anymore!" Kentin shakes his head, his eyes wide, the veins in the whites prominent under the bathroom lighting and his mouth agape. "I can't babysit you when you get all messed up like this and I can't keep covering for you! Have you even acknowledged that you are a missing person!? Do you know what that means!? What your parents have to think!?"

Alexy swallows and tightly squeezes his eyes shut. "Stop."

"No, you stop! Stop pretending everything's normal! I'm pretty sure I could get arrested for hiding you, do you realize that?!"

"You're my friend." Alexy bites his lip, feeling snakes constrict around his insides. "I'd hide you."

"You won't even tell me what you're hiding from!" Kentin gasps in exasperation.

Alexy chokes. His throat knots up and his veins run cold, the haunting sensation of being incomplete suddenly summoned to the forefront of his mind. Maybe it's because of the alcohol and the slackened function of his frontal lobe, but he finally cracks and lets acerbic honesty ooze out.

"You don't know what it's like, alright? You don't know what it's like to be literally _born_ with someone and for them to always be there, through _everything_ and then just...Not be. He's gone, but his room is still across the hall, and his stupid games still fill up the shelf, his pervy anime pictures are still eating up half the space in the computer, and his chair is at the table..." Alexy covers his face with his hands, his terrible face that it takes all he has not to flinch at when he glimpses mirrored surfaces because it's not just his own.

"Don't make me go home, please," he begs Kentin in a blubbery sob. "I can't go home. Armin's everywhere, but he's gone and it's just not right."

The moment hangs, dragging out until they're interrupted by someone else coming into the bathroom. Then Kentin pats his back and hauls him up under the armpits, and his eyes feel swollen and his head is spinning, and he hopes he doesn't remember any of this in the morning.

"Come on," is all Kentin says. "Let's get out of here...I'm sorry, but it's late."

Alexy stumbles alongside him to the parking lot, and this thing keeps nagging him, needling his brain even now. This alien, writhing apprehension, this thought that maybe he really isn't supposed to be here. That it's wrong that he is. A mistake, twisted, _wrong_.

"If you're born with someone, it only makes sense that you're supposed to die with them too, right?"

"No," replies Kentin. "It doesn't. Don't tell yourself stuff like that."

And yet...

* * *

**Fuck e_e**

**This is beyond crap. This is the feces excreted when shame eats too much ham. I sincerely apologize, FigureInTheCorner. Feel free to request something else in compensation. I can't guarantee it won't be terrible, but it'd have to be less terrible than this o_e'**

**Beh. Will fix typos when I'm done marinating in cheap tragedy porn. And on another note, Happy Valentines Day~! **


End file.
